Friday, February 22, 2019

WASHINGTON (BP) -- Religious liberty advocates including Southern Baptists hope the U.S. Supreme Court will establish a clear precedent Feb. 27 to answer a question regarding the separation of church and state in the public square. Read More

VENEZUELA (BP) -- Thousands of Venezuelans of all ages, across the entire nation, have marched on the streets in protest of the Nicolás Maduro regime. Scores were shot dead, more were beaten, hundreds rounded up and detained, according to media reports.

As 2019 unfolds, the infrastructure continues a downward spiral, hyper-inflation has exceeded 1.5 million percent, food and medicine are increasingly difficult to acquire. And 3 million or more out of 31 million Venezuelans reportedly have fled the country in the past few years. Read More

RALEIGH, N.C. (BP) -- Pro-family groups in North Carolina are calling for prayer after state officials ordered a new election in the 9th Congressional District, where initial results appeared to send former pastor Mark Harris to Congress but allegations of ballot fraud have persisted since shortly after Election Day. Read More

LAUREL, Miss. (BP) -- Faye Pearson, the first woman to serve as an area director for the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, died Feb. 20 following a long battle with cancer. She was 78.

Pearson started her career in the early 1960s as many women did then -- working as a secretary, teacher and church education director. But how things had changed by 1993, when the world's largest evangelical missions organization elected her to lead their work in East Asia. Read More

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (BP) -- A new children's book on the life of Bill Wallace, a Southern Baptist missionary doctor in China from 1935 until his death in 1951, has been released, with a foreword by IMB President Paul Chitwood.

"BILL: An American Doctor in China" by Ann Lovell, written specifically for fourth- to sixth-grade readers, is based on the 1963 book "Bill Wallace of China" by Jesse Fletcher. Read More

Formed in 1946 by the Southern Baptist Convention, and supported with Cooperative Program funds, Baptist Press (BP) is a daily (Monday-Friday) international news service. Operating from a central bureau in Nashville, Tenn., BP works with a large network of contributing writers, photographers and editorial providers to produce BP News.